


as a matter of right

by Nabielka



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: M/M, Politics, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 01:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8691811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: Laurent’s accession does not please everybody. Meanwhile, Kallias is in need of information.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thishasnomeaning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thishasnomeaning/gifts).



_"To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity. For all men being originally-equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and though himself might deserve some decent degree of honors of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them."_ \- Thomas Paine, Common Sense

*

“But at least he respected the unassailable independence of the nation!” finished Lord Mathe, with a sharp wave of the arm as though he meant to strike someone. It was a strange affectation: he was not built to easily overpower, yet his hands were always moving. 

The others glanced at each other furtively. This was not Arles, where people were so eager now to give the King the impression of unswerving loyalty, nor further south where they cared for him more genuinely, but to defend convicted traitors so was impolitic. 

Still, he thought grimly, the highborn forgave each other. It was said that the Akielon king, that chained brute, was ever by their King’s side. There was a lively dispute over who wielded more influence over the other. 

Those who had been at the Regent’s court, however, remembered who had wielded the whip. They remembered who had let out how much the incursions of the Akielons ever over their borders, raiders and slavers in the nights, had cut at them. They looked at each other and saw fear at the edges of the masks, and knew too who had left court and hoped that the court would not pursue them.

The high royalty on their high thrones spared not a thought for the common folk when they shifted the provincial borders and local overlordships, but they never forgot when one did not bow deep enough, or, unknowing, could not pretend to fealty and submission. The ballads spoke of the terrible curse of Alodie, mistress of the still independent Acquitart, when turmoil had made her seek relief in disguise only to find a populace unbending to her orders. 

They were familiar to him now, though of no comfort like the stirring tales of his childhood, and a cold remembrance at that. 

“What now, then?” said Lady Marcella. She was from Varenne, travelling through Essaudun on her way down to Ladehors, or so she said, but she had been present at a few of these meetings now. “He has done nothing against the laws.”

“You’ve heard the rumours,” said Lord Mathe, turning his face around the room as though awaiting confirmation. “Are we to wait until they are confirmed, when it will be too late?”

Lady Marcella said, “They waited here at Essaudun four hundred years ago.” Her voice was very clear, her enunciation precise. She might have been a schoolmistress, an advocate before the king, were her rank not so elevated.

So they had. Every child in the villages, every youth in the towns, knew at least that much of the history of Vere.

She said, “And so too must the nation wait now.”

“The nation!” said a voice he did not know, hopelessly provincial. Once Ancel might have heard it and felt some semblance of solidarity with a fellow outsider, though they were from far-flung corners of the kingdom. Now it grated upon the ear. “When have kings not done as they pleased, and we have borne it?”

His mother, sinking her hands into a chipped bowl, used to say something similar, though not against the royals. The memory of her came unbidden: they had not seen each other in years. The terms of service were stringent.

“The nation has long fought to retain the right to deal with kings in such circumstances,” said Lady Marcella stiffly. She held herself very straight. 

The unknown snorted. “The nation has nothing!”

Lord Mathe’s irritation was clear on his face, but did not mark itself upon his voice. “You may not know your history,” he said, and made a gesture with his hands that was habitual, and which presented always to good effect the heavy rings of office his ancestors had been granted. “But it was accepted even in the time of Aleksandre the Cruel and confirmed in the laws enacted by the Great Council of the Thirteen. If the king turns against the accepted principles of the realm, it is the duty – ”

“Of your fine nobility! That is your nation! Your principles are your so-called rights over us all! And so you take and do not pay for it, and sit in your councils while we are tried for rebellion. I can’t believe I actually thought there might be some point to this!” He stood. 

There was some movement among his companions, the rustling of cloth, as though to let him pass, as though to join him. 

Lord Mathe rose also. He turned his face away from the young man to his guard, who accompanied him even in such endeavours as these. 

“Do nothing!” cried Lord Jerome. He had risen to his feet, was making his way across the room. “You will ruin us all. We are risking so much already!”

He reached Lord Mathe, placed one hand on his forearm. 

“This man,” said Lord Mathe, “threatens us all. He cannot be left to –”

“Don’t be a fool! You will damn us all! And for nothing!” 

They stood there gazing at one another. Nobody seemed to move. 

From outside on the streets there came a shout, indistinct. 

Lord Mathe pulled his arm away with a scowl. “Leave, then.”

It was not a general instruction, rather one meant only for the one who would defy him, though there was no official leader in this. Still, tensions were running high, and every moment a danger, even hidden thus, and so they did disperse. Ancel’s lord swept away with his attendants, to some other business, some other plots, to which his contracted pet was not to be made privy. 

By the time Ancel himself left, enough time had passed to cool the air and thin the crowds. A few stragglers remained, and the market stalls were being closed up. It was easy then, to catch sight of a familiar figure making his lonely way away from the main square, and easy enough to catch his arm without being himself jostled by anybody else. 

They could have been any two youths, apprentices perhaps, fortunate enough to have a lenient master and so much freedom of their own. In the dimming light they might even have been cousins, brothers. 

He said, “Why are you still here?”

Kallias blinked at him.

The place was too open, it was no place to talk. Ancel’s hand was still around his wrist. He was very close.

He made to move it, but had only loosened his grip before he had thought better of it, and ended up tugging Kallias with him as they walked along. Nearby there was a little square. They stopped there, by the well, and Ancel asked him again.

“After all,” he added, “you’ve gone to so much effort to find out.”

Kallias looked down at the stone of the well, marred and worn by generations. He said, “I cannot go,” in a voice that sounded as though it came from far away. 

“You’ve made it here,” Ancel pointed out, “and your Patran is better than your Veretian.”

This was true. Their conversation, though improving, never quite flowed. Kallias had picked up a great deal of functional Veretian from those sent south by the Regent, but still would attempt to fill in the gaps in his knowledge with Patran, which often Ancel could not understand. It ranked to think him more proficient than Ancel was, it was appalling to think of him taught by the Akielons for so many years, while Ancel had only a few years at the rundown village school, and even that cut short. 

“I cannot go to Patras,” Kallias repeated, and then, uncertainly, “It is a danger to me.” He bent his wrists in a gesture that could not be misunderstood. His sleeves slipped down, revealing skin which the sun had avoided, and past cruelty had marked.

He couldn’t look. Into the silence he said, “Would you rather not know?” 

Kallias turned his face away. Across the street the merchants were closing down their stalls, packing up their goods, wrapping them up, their voices blurring together, indistinct.

“No,” he said finally, in a voice so soft that Ancel had to strain to hear him against the wind. Then, louder and clearer, “This –,” he broke off with a bitter private smile, and resuming, his voice changed. It was a voice, Ancel thought and felt a chill rise over his arms, that he might have heard at court, impersonal and intended to carry, though there was no one to overhear. He had turned back. “I am glad to know, and much indebted to you for the favour.”

It was wrong. He had done nothing but provide information hundreds of others also knew. He had caused those Akielons no harm, but neither had he spared them any thought at all. 

But it did not seem possible to say so, not when Kallias cared so very much. He said only, “You’re cold.”

Kallias blinked at him. He looked down at his arms as though he had not felt it at all, had not noticed the prickling of goosebumps or even that he was shivering. 

Ancel laid a hand on his. It was very cold, and very soft indeed. He wrapped his hand around Kallias’ fingers and squeezed the warmth through. 

He was very still. He said, slowly, “I think I should go.” But he made no move to pull away, only stood there looking at Ancel with that strange fixed expression, his arm still raised as Ancel had lifted it. 

Ancel let go, and it fell.

He found himself wanting to stop him, though he had little to say and no right at all to keep him there in the cold, no right at all to do anything but to stand there and watch Kallias walk away. 

Still, he found himself calling out to him to meet him later, that he would give him something for the chill.

But Kallias was far away by then, and Ancel did not know if he heard. 

He found himself walking back alone, thinking of curls and warm eyes. It was, at least, not that far, for all the high nobility kept their houses in comfortable distance of everything they would need, and it seemed like very little time had passed by the time Ancel found himself in his lord’s study, pouring his wine, for his master liked the personal touch. 

He was sitting back indolently on an armchair, full from his supper, and when his chalice was full, he waved Ancel back to the other side of the room, and looked at him for a while. Finally, he said, “Crawl.”

Ancel dropped to his knees, feeling the pain of it even as his cheeks flushed red. It was warm in the room; it was not from that. 

“This,” said Lord Mathe, “was what the Prince had done to his slave.” He beckoned him.

He forced himself to move forward, while his mind screamed in reminder of what else the Prince had done. Long-term harm of that sort was prohibited by contract, of course, but his lord had a streak of cruelty coursing through him, and the resources and position to make his realities stick. Ancel was neither fool enough nor supported enough to be able to contemplate making any claim against him.

Once he had been a fool. Lord Berenger had been kind, in his way, if somewhat dull and not given to generosity. His current lord, who was wealthier and munificent with it, had his own, better hidden faults. 

He was now almost at his feet, where his master liked him. 

“Tell me,” he said, “what it was like in the gardens.”

It was not a memory Ancel cared to relive. He said, bowing his head, “My lord, I recall you watched it.” He reached out to untie the laces. 

Lord Mathe raised a hand to his chin and lifted it up, so that Ancel was looking up at him. “Very well. Shall I instruct you as the Prince did, or have you learned since?”

There was no reply to make to that. Ancel applied his mouth. He had learned other things too. 

He had learned, though it had been a long lesson, that to reach for power was not to keep it. There was no councillor’s medallion on his lord’s neck, which he had been fortunate to keep. 

“Do you suppose,” mused his lord, interrupted briefly by his own need for a sharp intake of air at the work of Ancel’s tongue around the head of his cock, “that the King does this now for his brother’s killer?” He laid his hand, the metal a biting coldness and the skin so warm, atop Ancel’s head. 

Ancel did not let it interrupt him. It riled his master more to have his pleasure interrupted. The hand tightened around his head and pushed it down, as though to make him choke.

Ancel did not choke. He did not suffer from such problems, and had not for years.

The Prince would. 

It did not seem possible to imagine him used as a pet. He had the looks for it certainly, and the youth, and even his brattiness would not have been out of place, for many lords preferred the challenge of one requiring a firmer hand, and the Prince would require a firm one indeed. But it was unseemly. 

His lord was still talking, now again of the time the court had first gone south. “– dressed – half-undressed I should say – in the Akielon style, and even cuffed like their slaves!” 

He was talking again of the trial, of the moment when his fortunes had turned, and Ancel’s, shackled to his, had followed. He was distracted, not guarding his pleasure, and it did not take long for him to spill down Ancel’s throat.

When he was done, Ancel made to rise, but his lord’s hand kept him down. It smoothed through his hair, more assessing than a caress. 

After a moment, he said, “Fairer hair would suit you better,” and let him rise.

He would have let him leave too, were it not that, having almost reached the doors, Ancel found that he had turned around. It was foolish: to delay was to risk being bent over Lord Mathe’s desk, and he lacked the energy for that. Still, he said, “Were all the Akielons slaves sent to Patras, my lord?”

Mathe had turned back to his papers, he was breaking open the seal on a letter. At Ancel’s words his hand had moved abruptly, submitting the letter to more force than necessary: it tore a little. He looked at Ancel, then placed it carefully down.

“What interest is that of yours?” he said.

He dared not say, could not explain it.

“None, my lord,” he said, “Only..”

“Yes?”

He weighed his words. “Well, with the rumours about the slaves, is it not possible that something will be attempted on that quarter? And sour Akielon relations with Patras? The prince-killer did not seem particularly politic, in Arles.”

The excuse was sufficient. Ancel's interest in any distraction to Damianos was known to all who had been at court in those fateful days that had set so many on this path.

“No,” said Mathe after a considerable pause. “Indeed he was not.” He leaned back in his chair, and gave Ancel a long look. “I believe that one was taken by Councillor Guion for his personal use. He certainly mentioned something of the kind as a mitigation for general Akielon barbarity. Now, of course,” he waved his hands. The ruffles slid down a little. Ancel was reminded, forcibly, of Kallias, his gesture of helplessness and explanation, but Lord Mathe’s wrists showed only veins. He was still speaking, “Who is to say? But most were indeed sent away, as everybody knows.” 

But something in the sight had arrested Ancel. Even the other slaves – the real ones, who were not Damianos the prince-killer – had been cuffed. Even in the gardens there had been a boy next to Damianos, with gold curled around his wrists.

He must have had them removed somewhere on the way, found a sympathetic blacksmith in Arran perhaps, or elsewhere, found a boat in the confusion of the new reign, and been very fortunate. 

The room was silent; Lord Mathe had finished speaking, and turned back to his papers. Dismissed thus, Ancel took his cue, bowed, and left the room. 

The door closed behind him. He walked down the corridors, passing several sets of guards engaged in uncaring conversation. He thought of Kallias walking alone in the dark. 

They had met only ever in public places, Ancel did not know where he was housed. This was natural, of course, but still the thought chilled him. 

He shook his head to clear it, entering his own bedchamber and dropping to his knees to rifle through his belongings. He had been at court too long, he had been in the bed of a man who would politick himself into a noose and what was innocuous had become suspect to him. 

Gathering up some old items of clothing, grown unfashionable and reflecting the unpleasing tastes of old admirers, he stuffed them into a bag, then dressed himself again for the evening chill and slipped out.

It was not long until he met again with Kallias, now tucked into a corner, and not long until Kallias had grown pink with his gift.

“Really,” he said, “no one has ever…”

He was looking at Ancel like no one ever had, like the people looked up at the lords who had done nothing for them at all.

Ancel couldn’t bear it. He looked out instead into the crowd, the figures at the bar, from whom wafted over words cut off from an argument: something about a change in the beer.

He said, in lieu of an acknowledgement, “I have heard there was a boy.”

It worked. Kallias blinked at him for a moment, then his features regained their usual set, which seemed now in contrast rather grim. Ancel found himself still talking, and by and by, his expression lightened.

“And now?”

That was the problem. There was no way to know. “I don’t recall one being near Arles, but perhaps he was left at Fortaine. In any case, they might know what happened to his household there, or perhaps at Ios, where Lord Guion met his end.”

“No,” said Kallias. “The Veretians didn’t – I would have seen him then.” But the words were soft, and seemed not to reach completion. After a pause, he said instead, “Where is Fortaine?”

“South,” said Ancel. “Near Delfeur.”

There was a rumour that it was indeed to be Delfeur again. There were many rumours. It was hard to know which to credit, when in turn the new King was to conquer Akielos, or be conquered in turn. Who knew how things stood, when the Prince-killer had been forced to his knees and whipped and the Prince himself cuffed?

“South,” Kallias repeated with a bitter half-smile. 

He reached over to the candle on the table, moved it a little. His fingernails were uneven. 

He said, “At least there is something to hope for.”

Ancel said, “I am sorry that it makes you return there. Will it not be dangerous?”

Kallias shook his head. “There is much I would give to see him again.” He hesitated, looking away, and added, “We did not part on good terms.”

“Is that why?” Ancel himself had parted with a considerable number of people in ways that were less than positive, many of whom had deserved it, and worse. He would not have fatigued himself to patch up relations with any of that motley lot.

Kallias fixed his gaze on him. “You couldn’t understand. He would have –”, he closed his eyes with a shake of his head, “There was no other way. But there is nothing I want more than to see him.” 

Having said so, he looked again at Ancel, with a fixed expression, his jaw slightly lifted, as though expecting to defend this, as though there was any objection Ancel could have made, when it had been clear from the beginning what he was after.

But when it was clear that no challenge would come, something in his face softened, and he reached out his hand across the table as though to cover Ancel’s. But he hesitated; his hand hung there in the air before dropping on wood, and so it was Ancel whose movement breached that last short length and made contact. 

His hand was very soft. 

“Truly I am thankful. If there’s anything I can do in return…” 

He let the suggestion hang in the air; Ancel felt it as a hot flush. Kallias had no resources to command, save his training. 

The light was poor, but not enough to obscure his looks. Ancel let his gaze linger. 

His contract demanded exclusivity, of course, but such terms were known to be a fiction. Lord Mathe would not know, he would not care; an Akielon slave would not buy out Ancel’s contract and cause his master embarrassment. 

People like that had no power: an Akielon slave could do nothing. 

And yet it was said that an Akielon slave was to rule Vere. An Akielon slave who would remember Ancel, who would be bound by no recognisable limits of practice or law in taking his vengeance. 

He let himself think for a moment of that other one, the boy with Damianos then in the garden, when they had come upon them with Lord Berenger and Lady Vannes, whose role in the affair had been so minor as to allow her reprieve and a position at court. How much better to have performed with him, an inconsequential who had been sold on to Patras and about whom nobody had bothered since. 

Much like nobody would bother with defending Ancel, when the time came, and neither Lord Mathe, who had fallen from favour and would think nothing of sacrificing him in hopes of an end to his exile from court, nor even more so the new king, who had after all allowed it, would say a word to alleviate Akielon wrath.

Better to disappear away from court, as it was said the overseer Radel had done when word had come to Arles. But men like that had resources Ancel never would. 

Resources Kallias would never have, because he did not have them now, and sought still to recompense Ancel in the only manner he could.

He could not do it. He had been on the other side of it a hundred times, and though he was not naïve enough to bear resentment for it, he thought of them with nothing more than mild distaste. It did not please him to think of Kallias thinking of him like that, all those days and nights on the road south.

“In return for what? You might thank me once you’ve found him,” he choked out, tearing his gaze away from that mass of curls, the soft-looking mouth. 

“Once,” Kallias repeated. He sighed, his eyes flicking down to their hands, which were still joined. “Perhaps.” Something in his face had softened. “But I am thankful to you even for the hope. It has given me a new purpose, one I thought lost long ago. Much as I had lost him.”

When he looked up again, he was smiling. Ancel felt his heart lift, and then the corners of his mouth. 

His hand on Kallias’ felt very warm. He said, “I wish you all the luck in the world.” Though he knew even as he spoke that he had little enough to give. For even as Kallias made his way south, soon they would come north from Akielos and – 

But it did no good to dwell on it. 

“Think kindly of me,” he said, and regretted it even as the words left his mouth. How strange it must seem, and how silly, and how futile it would be at the end of it all. He scrambled to cover it, not wanting to see the shift in Kallias’ face. “Even if you’re not successful.”

“Of course I will,” said Kallias in surprise, and squeezed his hand. “Whatever happens I will never forget what you have done.”

Neither would others, who thought of him with much less warmth. Ancel smiled back, and tried to hold on to the moment, to store it up so that he would remember it when the time came to meet with another Akielon, to remember this one and the joy in his face, the hope spread out before him like a path to the rest of his life.


End file.
